Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Las Vegas Valley home-price decline continues but slowing

Las Vegas Housing Market

Steve Marcus

A home for sale is shown in a residential area near Wigwam Avenue and Buffalo Drive Thursday, June 9, 2022.

Existing home prices in Southern Nevada continued their downward trend last month, according to a report released Tuesday.

The median price for a home in the Las Vegas Valley in October was $440,000, down 2% from September, according to the Las Vegas Realtors trade group.

In August and September, the median price held steady at $450,000, though it reached a record high of $482,000 in May.

When compared to October 2021, last month’s median price was still up 7%.

One of the biggest factors that has led to downward pressure is mortgage rates, which have skyrocketed this year.

As of this month, mortgage rates for a fixed 30-year loan, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, hovered at close to 7%.

Last year at this time, that same rate was close to 3%. Just a couple of percentage points of a change can mean the difference of hundreds of dollars per month on a home loan for consumers.

“Ever since mortgage interest rates started rising this summer, we’ve seen the housing market cool down,” said Brandon Roberts, president of Las Vegas Realtors, in a statement. We’re seeing more homes on the market, and fewer homes are selling.”

In fact, Roberts pointed out, local home sales are down about 22% from the same time last year.

As for local condominiums and townhomes, the median price for units sold last month was $266,000, a slight decrease from September, but still up about 13% from October 2021.

The record for median price of a condo or townhome here was set in May at $285,000.

At the end of last month, more than 7,900 homes were listed in Southern Nevada without any type of offer.

That was up 141% from this time last year, according to Las Vegas Realtors.

On the condo and townhome side, nearly 1,800 were listed last month without any sort of offer, a jump of 205% from a year ago.

The price of a home in Southern Nevada is still close to four times what it was when the market bottomed out in early 2012.

Then, the median price of a home was just $118,000.

The trade group said the Las Vegas market now has about a four-month supply of homes on the market.

Formerly called the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, the trade group has over 17,000 members. It was founded in 1947.